121–130 of 136 posts
We're in luck. There are 16 million abandoned homes in the US https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/vacancy-rates-stud... Easily takes care of the half a million people experiencing homelessness as well.
Much as I (a relatively young person) am in favor of more housing, isn't it also true that a surge in homebuilding would eviscerate the wealth of a lot of older Americans who are on the verge or in the midst of retirement? I feel dread whenever I look at the retirement savings numbers. So many elderly who'll have to live on a knife's edge financially.
> eviscerate the wealth of a lot of older Americans who are on the verge or in the midst of retirement? Using rising home values as a retirement account is essentially just a pyramid scheme. Like, just think about how this has to work. It only functions if home values drastically increase between purchase and retirement, right? Let's say they have to double, for it to be significant for retirement savings: that means…
Paying down a mortgage builds equity in the home. It's because homes are relatively illiquid and most people choose to own instead of rent that housing works rather well as a de facto retirement account. I see no issue with that personally.
> Like, just think about how this has to work. It only functions if home values drastically increase between purchase and retirement, right?
No it doesn't, for the same reason as stated above: accrued equity as a mortgage is paid down. Also, average home appreciation in the US roughly tracks inflation (which makes sense).
> just look at the bay area for an example
Why would you look at the most extreme real estate market in the country to draw any important conclusions?
> It's unearned wealth, plain and simple.
No it was just an investment whose return variance is principally explained by randomness. And of course not representative of the larger set. Almost everyone who has money in housing loses out after accounting for opportunity cost and things like maintenance + repair + property taxes.
We're in luck. There are 16 million abandoned homes in the US https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/vacancy-rates-stud... Easily takes care of the half a million people experiencing homelessness as well.
Vacant != abandoned. Right from the article you linked, 2nd parg: "But this doesn’t mean millions of abandoned and dilapidated homes are withering away in the suburbs. Vacant homes can be unoccupied for many reasons beyond being uninhabitable. For example, a house can be vacant because it’s still on the market to be sold or rented or it’s a vacation home not currently in use."
Do you mean that we don't have enough vacant homes?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
White noise generators work great.
I'm skeptical that white noise would be equal or better to the quiet of suburbia. Especially against high db sounds like firetrucks, helicopters, and trains. Doesn't look like there is much research in this area though.
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I think this is pretty much the most important point: we already have the houses, so we could save so much in CO2 emissions and materials if we don't build 4.3M more homes and instead just pay to put people in existing homes (via eminent domain or subsidized rents or whatever.) edit to add: A couple of people have mentioned that the vacant homes are not in desirable locations. As an anecdote, I live in Park Merced in…
What happens when the next group of RV dwellers show up? You just gave away homes in one of the most expensive and desirable locations in the country. Isn’t it reasonable to expect your homeless population to backfill with other RV dwellers looking for the same? It sounds so wasteful to buy such expensive real estate, lose property tax revenue, and assume perpetual maintenance costs just to house a fraction of the ho…
Build more housing and give it to them.
> Isn’t it reasonable to expect your homeless population to backfill with other RV dwellers looking for the same?
Yes, but there's only about 500,000 homeless people in America. It would not quite double the city population. (Last I checked we were around 800,000.)
Park Merced alone could hold thousands more families if we converted the garden apartments and townhomes to towers, although that wouldn't be the only option. The entire Sunset District is almost all single-family homes. SF is a young city, there is lots of room.
> It sounds so wasteful to buy such expensive real estate, lose property tax revenue, and assume perpetual maintenance costs just to house a fraction of the homeless you could elsewhere.
Perhaps, but compare that to the opportunity cost to society of keeping all those families living in RVs. That's the real waste, eh?
Give them homes, let their kids grow up in stable homes, check back in three generations, eh?
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I think this is pretty much the most important point: we already have the houses, so we could save so much in CO2 emissions and materials if we don't build 4.3M more homes and instead just pay to put people in existing homes (via eminent domain or subsidized rents or whatever.) edit to add: A couple of people have mentioned that the vacant homes are not in desirable locations. As an anecdote, I live in Park Merced in…
People probably want a new home in a desirable location more than a one-house reduction in global CO2 emissions, so what you’re saying requires some amount of coercion. Who’s getting their house taken by the state to give to somebody else, and who’s paying to subsidize the rent?
The simple answer is, volunteers first and if that's not enough we can do a lottery. That's just off the top of my head.
> and who’s paying to subsidize the rent?
US Government. We'll take it out of the defense budget. In the interests of National Security and all that.
I really don't think it's that crazy of an idea. The details would be messy but we could house everyone overnight if we really wanted to.
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> eviscerate the wealth of a lot of older Americans who are on the verge or in the midst of retirement? Using rising home values as a retirement account is essentially just a pyramid scheme. Like, just think about how this has to work. It only functions if home values drastically increase between purchase and retirement, right? Let's say they have to double, for it to be significant for retirement savings: that means…
> Using rising home values as a retirement account is essentially just a pyramid scheme. Paying down a mortgage builds equity in the home. It's because homes are relatively illiquid and most people choose to own instead of rent that housing works rather well as a de facto retirement account. I see no issue with that personally. > Like, just think about how this has to work. It only functions if home values drasticall…
Irrelevant. Mere equity in a home with a flat value is essentially unaffected by lowered property values overall: you'll not be forced to 'save' as much, but the point of saving was to not have a mortgage payment anymore. If you don't need to 'save' as much to reach the same outcome, if anything that's a net good.
The only real downside here is if you were counting on moving to somewhere not affected by lower property values, AND you didn't invest the money elsewhere that would've gone into more expensive housing. But for most people, it's a good thing.
> Also, average home appreciation in the US roughly tracks inflation (which makes sense).
Your data is out of date. It used to hover around 200k current dollars on average, but now it's far higher. The increasingly terrible zoning and other building regulations finally caught up to us: https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/
And note that it tends to be particularly bad anywhere the economy is good. Of course, some of that is expected, but the effect is just more drastic than it should be.
> No it was just an investment whose return variance is principally explained by randomness.
No, it's just luck compounded by regulations that favor handing out wealth to the elderly over the keeping costs reasonable for younger people.
The US has a population of 329.5 million. Average household size is 2.51 people. So we need to house 131 million families - but the US already has 142 million housing units. The surplus is 3x the headline. What am I missing? https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-h... https://www.statista.com/statistics/240267/number-of-housing...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vacant != abandoned. Right from the article you linked, 2nd parg: "But this doesn’t mean millions of abandoned and dilapidated homes are withering away in the suburbs. Vacant homes can be unoccupied for many reasons beyond being uninhabitable. For example, a house can be vacant because it’s still on the market to be sold or rented or it’s a vacation home not currently in use."
> Vacant != abandoned. Do you mean that we don't have enough vacant homes?